1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to an image forming apparatus, and more particularly, the present general inventive concept relates to a cleaning apparatus having an improved structure to remove waste toner remaining on a photoconductive medium, and an image forming apparatus having the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional image forming apparatus forms a toner image by applying a toner to a photoconductive medium bearing an electrostatic latent image, and transfers the toner image onto a printing medium. The waste toner remaining on the photoconductive medium is removed by a waste toner cleaning unit, and is collected in a waste toner collecting portion.
If the waste toner is not efficiently transferred, a cleaning performance of the waste toner cleaning unit deteriorates. For example, if the waste toner is removed by a cleaning member from a photoconductive medium but is not completely transferred to the waste toner collecting portion, the waste toner piles up near the cleaning member. This pile of waste toner becomes larger as newly removed waste toner is added to the pile, and occasionally, the waste toner flows backward to the cleaning member. If cleaning performance of the cleaning unit deteriorates, an electrification unit does not electrify the photoconductive medium efficiently, and if a surface of the photoconductive medium is not electrified completely, image contamination such as a stain on an electrostatic latent may occur.
A waste toner transferring apparatus having a rather complicated structure may be employed to efficiently transfer the waste toner. However, the addition of components may interrupt waste toner flow, and also increase the material cost and fabricating process.